Dear Friend and Reader:
В There’s a lot going on to be pretty crazy mad about: economics, foreign policy, the environment. Not only now, but over the last year, the last eight years, hell, the last thirty or forty years. As I was writing “Blowing the Roof Off the House of Cards,” it dawned that I was coming close to self-parody. In writing about manufactured outrage, I was naming the outrage a distraction from the true crimes being committed in the name of saving our economy. Yet, there I was writing to encourage outrage about manufactured outrage. I must have been channeling the editorial board at The Onion.
Just what is the manufactured outrage about? Why are we so drawn to it? Did it begin with Clinton, followed by eight years of Cheney-Bush. Since Neptune entered Aquarius nearly ten years ago, it seems so. Now night after night, we watch and listen to news about the latest bailout scandal at AIG, served up with a pinch of blame, a scoop of moral indignation, a cup of schadenfreude, served on a platter of outrage. We have come to expect outrage to accompany and maybe even replace thinking.В The problem is who is really thinking these thoughts? Are they our true thoughts and feelings? Are they being created for us so we don’t have to do either?В
Media-manufactured outrage is a way for us to remain passive and unproductive because it gives us a false impression that we’re expending energy doing something. We’re not. We’re just getting angrier. Something is being played here and its not violins.